Secondo
"Secondo"https://twitter.com/BryanFuller/status/522824050314190850 is the third episode of Season 3, and the twenty-ninth produced hour of Hannibal. It aired on June 18, 2015. Plot Will travels to Lithuania where he gains a new ally in his search for Hannibal Lecter. Once there, Will meets the mysterious Chiyoh, former attendant to Hannibal's aunt. Meanwhile, Jack Crawford arrives in Italy, hoping to find Will and intervene before tragedy strikes again, and Bedelia Du Maurier warns Hannibal against unraveling his new life. Synopsis Will travels to Lecter's childhood home in Lithuania in further search of his nemesis. Lecter and Du Maurier continue to discuss Graham and the fact that Lecter is drawing Graham and "all of them" to him. Jack Crawford arrives in Palermo in search of Will. Pazzi shows Crawford the case photographs of Dimmond's heart, and they have a conversation about Lecter. Will discovers a distraught man in an underground cell, where he meets Chiyoh, the attendant to Lecter's aunt. She reveals that Lecter's sister, Mischa, was murdered and cannibalized by the prisoner. Graham doesn't believe this. Elsewhere, Du Maurier asks Hannibal about his past and he tells her about Mischa. Du Maurier deduces that Hannibal ate Mischa to "forgive her". Chiyoh asks Graham why he is still searching for Lecter. He responds that he has never known himself better than when he is with Lecter. Graham removes the prisoner from the cell and turns him loose; he attacks Chiyoh but she kills him. Distraught at what she has done, she realizes that Graham set the man free on purpose to see if she was capable of killing, confirming his curiosity. Chiyoh agrees to help Will find Lecter, saying that with the prisoner dead, she has no reason to remain at the house. Before they leave, Graham fashions the corpse of the prisoner into the form of a dragonfly, and displays it in the underground chamber. Lecter and Du Maurier have another discussion about Graham and come to the conclusion that the only way for Lecter to forgive him is to eat him. Extras * The words “LECTER DVARAS” on the gate roughly translate to “Lecter Estate” in Lithuanian. * The word “Mylima” on Mischa’s grave is Lithuanian for “Beloved.” * Intriguingly, someone seems to be living in the main castle. This is most obvious in the nighttime establishing shot, where two floors in one section of the castle are clearly illuminated. (In the book, Lecter Castle is transformed into a state orphanage after the War.) * In the DVD/Blu Ray feature Hannibal Season 3: Killer Intentions, it is revealed that the writers considered having Jack die from his injuries in the season 2 finale. Bryan Fuller claims this was due to Laurence Fishburne's potential scheduling conflicts on the series Black-ish, although Fishburne himself claims that he was always prepared to come back as long as the writers wanted him. * Chiyoh quotes Danish author Karen Blixen when she says, “All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story.” * The script flags a particular line of the Caged Man’s dialogue to be subtitled: when Will releases him, the man asks, “Who am I?” repeatedly. The line was not subtitled in the finished episode. Book to Show * This episode very loosely alludes to Hannibal’s backstory from the novels Hannibal and, particularly, Hannibal Rising. Bryan Fuller intentionally crafted a new backstory, borrowing only certain elements from Hannibal Rising, partly out of necessity since the book’s strong ties to WWII would not work for the show’s 2010s setting, and partly because Fuller found the book to be conceptually flawed (he has admitted that, in contrast to the other Hannibal novels which he has reread repeatedly, he never even finished reading Hannibal Rising). Fuller has said that the book contradicts a core tenet of Hannibal’s character, which Lecter iconically expressed in The Silence of the Lambs: “Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened.” Notably, Hannibal says this line to Bedelia in this episode. * As in the books, the show’s Hannibal grew up in a Lithuanian castle (here called “Lecter Dvaras,” or “Lecter Estate,” as opposed to the book’s “Lecter Castle,” leaving somewhat ambiguous whether the show’s Hannibal comes from royalty). In the book, Hannibal’s family hides from Nazi invaders in a remote hunting lodge on their property for several years during WWII. His parents are killed in a bombing, and as the Axis line is driven back, Hannibal and his sister Mischa are imprisoned by a group of deserters, who eventually murder and eat Mischa for sustenance during the harsh winter. Years later, an eighteen-year-old Hannibal hunts the men down one by one and murders them, eating some. Near the end of the book, Vladis Grutas, the group’s ringleader, taunts Hannibal with the knowledge that Hannibal himself partook in the broth containing Mischa. (It is implied that Hannibal had repressed this knowledge, and that his murderous anger is partly driven by his own guilt.) The TV series background, in contrast, is much more ambiguous. The show does not reveal how Hannibal’s parents died. Most notably, it is strongly implied that Hannibal ate Mischa consciously and willingly because he was unable to deal with his feelings of love for her, removing the book’s “explanation” for why Hannibal became a cannibal. * This episode introduces Chiyoh from the novel Hannibal Rising. The show’s characterization differs greatly from the novel. This can be partly explained by the fact that Fuller’s initial plan was to use Hannibal’s aunt (and unconsummated love interest) Murasaki from the novel, and even tested actors for the role. However, he ultimately determined that “a more mature, sophisticated woman wouldn’t put up with the level of bullshit that was necessary for the story.” (http://collider.com/hannibal-season-3-bryan-fuller-talks-red-dragon-more/) He instead substituted the relatively minor character Chiyoh from the novel. In the book, Chiyoh is Murasaki’s attendant when a thirteen-year-old orphaned Hannibal moves in with Murasaki and Hannibal’s Uncle Robert in France. Chiyoh is said to be the same age as Hannibal, whereas on the show there is a visible age difference (Tao Okamoto is twenty years younger than Mads Mikkelsen). In the book, she never lives at Lecter Castle, and leaves France not long after Hannibal’s arrival, for an arranged marriage to the son of a diplomat’s family in Japan. By the time Hannibal is eighteen, Chiyoh writes that she has broken her engagement in order to be with a young engineering student. Chiyoh and her new betrothed are last heard from manufacturing “motor scooters” in partnership with two brothers. Her storyline on the show, as well as her skill at marksmanship, are entirely inventions of the TV series writers. * The twisting snake on the Lecter crest seen on the gates calls to mind the image that appears on the cover of the novel Hannibal of a man emerging from the mouth of a twisting dragon, which is actually the real-life Visconti crest (Hannibal’s mother is said to be descended from the Viscontis). (The episode script called for the crest to include the man in the serpent’s mouth, but this detail does not appear onscreen.) * The shows places the Lecter Estate in the Aukštaitija region of Lithuania (the northeast portion of the country). The novel Hannibal says Lecter Castle was near Vilnius (which is in the southeast/Dzūkija region), whereas Hannibal Rising is more vague, portraying it as being a long train ride from Vilnius, near the fictional Dubrunst. * Hannibal’s dialogue about seeing your childhood home comes from narration in Hannibal Rising, when an eighteen-year-old Hannibal returns to Lecter Castle hoping to find the dog tags identifying Mischa’s killers. * Will and Hannibal’s dialogue describing Hannibal’s memory palace is all adapted from the Prologue to Hannibal Rising. * The script specifies that the small building where Chiyoh lives is the hunting lodge, the location where Hannibal and Mischa were held prisoner before Mischa was killed and eaten, in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising. In the book, the hunting lodge is two hours’ walk through the woods from the main castle, but it seems to be much closer in the show. * Hannibal and Sogliato’s descriptions of the Studiolo come from the novel Hannibal. Sogliato echoes Hannibal’s “sing for my supper” line from “Antipasto,” adding the reference to dragons, which was part of the line as originally mockingly spoken by Pazzi in the novel. Bedelia’s comment that Hannibal sang very well echoes Pazzi’s wife Laura flirtatiously saying she is sure “Dr. Fell” will sing very well. * Sogliato’s line that the Studiolo affirmed Hannibal by “first applause, then by wet-eyed acclamation” comes from narration in the novel, describing not the Studiolo’s reaction to his lecture, but the reaction of the Uffizi and Belle Arti Commissions to Hannibal reciting Dante’s “A ciascun’alma presa e gentil core,” as seen in “Antipasto.” Sogliato’s line about the committees not missing the old curator likewise comes from narration in this portion of the novel. * The brain-damaged Sogliato at the dinner table calls to mind the fate of the lobotomized Paul Krendler near the end of the novel Hannibal. * Sogliato is not killed in the novel. * Hannibal references entropy, a concept he is obsessed with reversing in the novel Hannibal in order to bring Mischa back. * Bedelia and Hannibal imply that Sogliato held a position at the Palazzo Capponi. This did not appear to be the case in the book, where he is a member of one of the overseeing art committees. * Jack Crawford does not go to Italy in the novel Hannibal, and the FBI is never aware that Hannibal is there until he has killed Pazzi and fled. However, it does seem likely that Jack would have met Pazzi stateside in the books at some point, as Pazzi is said to have spent much time at the FBI’s Behavioral Science unit, hoping to replicate the model in Rome. * Most of the dialogue in the first Jack/Pazzi scene comes from narration in the novel Hannibal: Jack's line that Hannibal’s needs don’t force him to strike often (referring to Il Mostró in the novel) and Pazzi’s line about long periods when Il Mostró did not strike at all; the line about the Questura laboratory being garlanded with garlic; Pazzi’s lines about his city mocking him and crows pecking his heart; and Pazzi’s line about regaining reputation and enjoying the honors of their trade (when Pazzi is weighing whether he should legally capture Hannibal, or turn him over to Mason Verger). * The child’s handprint Will finds on the stone pedestal calls to mind Hannibal’s tracing of Mischa’s hand on the back of a painting when they were children, in Hannibal Rising. * The Caged Man is imprisoned in the wine cellar of the castle. In Hannibal Rising, the Lecters conceal all their valuable paintings in a secret compartment in the wine cellar before going into hiding; Vladis Grutas and Enrikas Dortlich later pillage the room. The unnamed Caged Man can be seen as the show’s version of Grutas and his cronies. * Chiyoh’s line about what the unborn hear comes from narration in The Silence of the Lambs, when Ardelia Mapp finds Clarice in her typical position of peace, sleeping against the washing machine. * Hannibal’s line about not needing conventional reinforcement, and Bedelia’s follow-up line, are paraphrased from narration in the novel Hannibal. * Will saying that Mischa does not quantify what Hannibal does refers to Hannibal’s famous dialogue in The Silence of the Lambs, berating Clarice for trying to “quantify” him. * Hannibal’s line that when he was young he was “rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust” comes from a description of eighteen-year-old Hannibal at the opera in Hannibal Rising. * Will’s positioning of the corpse-as-firefly calls back to Hannibal’s “chrysalis” dialogue in “Su-zakana,” and by extension to Jame Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs. The tableau resembles the iconic death’s-head moth from the cover of Silence of the Lambs, and the poster for the film adaptation. Cut Scenes * The script opens with Bedelia greeting Hannibal at the train station upon his return from Palermo. The shooting of this sequence can be glimpsed in the DVD/Blu Ray feature Hannibal on the Run. * Just before Bedelia asks Hannibal how Mischa tasted, the script contains a cutaway to Mischa’s black silhouette at the center of a cloud of fireflies “giving her form from air” on the grounds of the Lecter Estate. * The script has additional dialogue in the final Will/Chiyoh scene. Chiyoh clarifies that she never knew Mischa. She adds that she and Hannibal “swore promises on objects, pledges at the altar and a blood oath, pricking our fingers” (in Hannibal Rising, she makes Hannibal do all these things to assure her that he will take care of Murasaki once Chiyoh leaves). She then says, “‘M’ is for ‘Mischa,’” quoting a recurring line from Hannibal Rising (Hannibal says this when tracing Mischa’s initial in her hand as children, and later as he carves the letter ‘M’ repeatedly into Vladis Grutas’s face). A fragment of this remains in the episode, when Chiyoh says, “For Mischa.” Navigation